Dante’s Girl (The Paradise Diaries #1)(23)
Author: Courtney Cole

She shrugs again.  “I don’t know.  I don’t have a boyfriend or a best friend.  So I can’t reply to that with any amount of accuracy.”

I stare at her as a bite of the sent-from-heaven chocolate volcano lava melts in my mouth.

“You don’t have a best friend?” I ask, dubious once more. Everyone has a best friend.

“Nope.” She shakes her head and honestly doesn’t seem bothered by it.  “My father has always been very picky about who I can hang around with.  He’s the Minister of Defense for Dante’s father.  He’s very picky about image and public relations and being politically correct and all of that ridiculousness.  He won’t let me hang out with just anyone.  And the people that he will allow, aside from Dante, are all douche-bags.  So I would rather be alone.”

And now her slight rebellious act of dressing like a goth made total sense, I decide as I stare at her jet-black fingernail polish. Her dad is a complete control freak.  He deserves it.

“What does he think about you hanging out with an American?” I ask with a grin.

She smiles.

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Agreed.” I smile back, feeling like we’re co-conspirators and oddly enough, not feeling offended at the thought that being American was a crime.

“What are your plans for the rest of the day?” Mia asks as she licks the chocolate lava from her fingers. I shrug.

“I don’t have any.”

“Well, that’s a crime,” she announces.  “A true crime.  Look around you!  The day is young, the sky is blue, the sun is out.  How do you like scuba-diving?”

I freeze, with vivid images of JAWS stuck in my head.  In my mind, his gigantic jaws are swallowing me whole.

No, scratch that.

He’s biting me in half and blood is turning the water red. 

Yeah, that’s it.

That’s exactly what will happen if I step one foot into the ocean here.

I’ll die a bloody death as shark food and my mom will never see me again. Mia laughs at the look on my face.

“It’s amazing,” she tells me.  “You’ve got to try it.  We’ll start you out snorkeling because you probably won’t be here long enough for a scuba-diving course.”

“Nope.  No way,” I answer adamantly, shaking my head.  “Dante told me about your little shark problem.  You’ll never get me to do it.”

Thirty minutes later, I’m in the water with a rubber mask strapped to my face.  It can never be said that I’m not adventurous when forced to be.

Mia shows me how to get water out of the tube when it leaks in by blowing it out sharply.  She tells me that the most common problem is when new divers get flustered when water gets into their tubes.  I’m supposed to keep calm and simply blow the water out.  That’s a little difficult to do when I’m so completely focused on watching for sharks.

We swim and after a few minutes, more like thirty, I start to feel more at ease.

Every once in a while, Mia reaches out and grabs my hand and pulls me to a different place where we watch tropical fish leisurely swim in their little schools.  Or a sea turtle gliding gracefully by.  Or colorful tropical plants waving in the current.  

Under the surface, the water is perfect and aqua and silent. There is no drama, there are no mean girls and best friends and boys that I shouldn’t have crushes on but do anyway.

I sort of love it.

I kick my legs, letting the water flow fluidly over me.  I am weightless here.  I am relaxed and I haven’t been this comfortable in a long time.

Just as I am thinking about how wrong I had been to be terrified of sharks and about how wonderful this is and how I have never been this comfortable or relaxed in my whole entire life, I spot something out of the corner of my eye that makes me freeze.

A gray bump slowly coming toward me.

I pull my head out of the water so that I can see better and find that Mia is nowhere near.  But the gray sleek bump is only a hundred yards away and getting closer by the minute.  I flail and splash, then remember from watching Shark Week on TV that you definitely don’t want to splash.

Sweet Holy Monkeys.  What the eff do I do??

I yell for Mia, but don’t see her.   Has she been eaten?

I look around frantically, but we’ve drifted to an isolated location and there isn’t anyone else here.

Except for me and the shark.

And the shark is certainly taking his time to reach me.

Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh.

Oh. My. Gosh.

My breathing comes in pants as I try to slowly and calmly paddle backward, away from the shark, toward land, away from the shark.  Toward Land.  Away. From. The. Shark.

Then, a fin emerges.  A fin.  And I scream.  And scream.  And forget about not splashing.  I am splashing so much that every shark and sea creature in a hundred mile radius will know that I’m here. And I don’t care.  All I care about it surviving this shark attack.  Because it is going to attack me.  It’s stalking me right now like the prey that I am.  And very soon that water around me will be red because I’m going to die a bloody death.

And then I notice that the fin is made from hands.  A pair of hands.

I freeze.

What the eff?

Dante bursts from the water, wearing gray swim trunks and shaking droplets from his hair as he lunges to grab me with a roar.

I scream again because it’s happened so fast and my brain hasn’t had a chance to truly realize that it is Dante and not a shark.

I’m not going to die.

I’m not going to die.

I’m not going to die.

I’m not going to become breakfast for JAWS.

But I’m going to kill Dante.

I’m so mad that I smack him on the arm.  And smack him again.

“Dante, what the hell?” I demand angrily, so mad that I’m seeing spots.  “Not funny!  So not funny!”

He looks confused, then startled as it registers with him that I am truly pissed off. Severely and completely pissed off.  Both with him for pulling the stupidest and oldest prank ever and with myself for falling for it.

Oh-my-gosh-I’m-such-an-idiot.

I try to force my heart rate to slow down before I become the first seventeen-year old in the history of the world to die from heart failure in the middle of a fake shark attack.  I definitely don’t want that on my tombstone.